To summarize our theory: Polio is a virus, contagious like other viruses, and generally a harmless enterovirus. When it is introduced into the human body, it has the capacity to enter the nervous system when nerves are damaged. Damage can occur many ways: mechanically through needle puncture or surgery, or, we propose, biochemically via pesticidal or other toxic exposure. Once the virus enters the nervous system, it becomes dangerous in a way nature never allowed before. It spreads through the nervous system via "retrograde axonal transport." The resulting damage can lead to paralysis or death.

Two regions of the world continue to experience polio outbreaks, despite hopes the virus would be eradicated by 2000. This persistence has surprised and confused the experts.

“The eradication campaign has been stalled from about 2002 to 2007 … Why is it so difficult to complete the global eradication of wild poliovirus?” asked Neal Nathanson of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine in a 2008 medical review, “The Pathogenesis of Poliomyelitis: What We Don’t Know.”[i] (What we don’t know turns out to be a lot – the paper runs to 50 pages.)

“Currently, there are two epicenters that have resisted virus elimination, one in South Asia (Afghanistan, Pakistan, northern India) and one in West Africa (centered in Nigeria). What explains the persistence of wild polioviruses in these two foci?”

Nathanson cites three possibilities: those are warm climates, so poliovirus doesn’t go dormant in the winter as it theoretically did in other countries; the prevalence of other enteroviruses means that the live-virus polio vaccine is not as effective because the other viruses interfere with it; and poor public health infrastructure couple with fears about vaccination made the achievement of “herd immunity” harder than expected.

If one considers the toxin idea, however, another explanation jumps out, especially in South Asia. Erase national borders for a moment. While outbreaks are small and have waxed and waned over the past decade, the primary sites have been directly south of the Himalayan range in a smiley-face arc that runs west from Nepal and Bangladesh, through the Northern India districts of West Bengal, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, into Pakistan and Afghanistan.

(Photo: The Ganga-Meghna-Bramhaputra River Basins: An arsenic hotbed below the Himalayas)

This also happens to be the area with the worst mass poisoning from arsenic in human history. This is not ancient history – it didn’t even begin until the 1980s. It is a story of the single-minded war against microbes gone badly wrong. What happened is beautifully outlined in an American Scientist article, “No one checked: Natural Arsenic in Wells.”[ii]

“The wells that now supply the people's drinking water are sealed from bacterial contamination; their tight concrete tubes reach down 60 feet or more, past surface contamination,” write Phillip and Phylis Morrison. “The big investment in concrete wells, originally made by UNICEF and the World Bank, has beaten back diarrheal diseases, making a real contribution to the vigor and quality of life of the people here.”

But what no one checked was the possibility of another kind of contamination: the wells tapped into the deeper water table and pulled up arsenic that had been swept down the Himalayan watershed by the Ganges and Indus Rivers, both of which drain both slopes of the mighty range.

And that proved to be a catastrophic failure. “A new calamity as astonishing as it is threatening confronts the country people of the Bengal Basin,” the Morrisons write – a calamity that has continued to spread through India and westward. “The drinking water, though sealed from infection, can hold a chronic dose of invisible, tasteless, odor-free dissolved arsenic. … That trace presence is a public poison.”

In Bangladesh alone, the World Health Organization calls arsenic contamination of drinking water “the largest mass poisoning of a population in history” (an eerie echo of Biskind calling DDT use “the most intensive campaign of mass poisoning in human history”). In focusing solely on microbes, in failing understand the ecology they were tapping into, public health experts failed in their due diligence – “no one checked,” and so they simply missed the risk from the toxin. In a deep and disturbing irony, we believe that this arsenic exposure – born of a sincere but disastrously conceived effort to protect people from dangerous microbes -- has also led to the persistence of poliomyelitis.

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On May 12, 2010, Bill Gates boarded a boat in the city of Patna, on the Ganges River in the Indian province of Bihar, and traveled 140 miles east to the small village of Guleria. He was there to personally take the Gates Foundation’s fight against polio into the heart of the beast. Bihar is “one of only two Indian States where new cases of polio continue to be reported, according to UNICEF. Uttar Pradesh is the other.”[iii]

This is also arsenic country. The districts on both sides of the Ganges, including Patna and Khagara, are among the 16 worst arsenic-affected districts in Bihar.[iv] In neighboring Uttar Pradesh, “as many as 20 districts have alarmingly high arsenic content in the groundwater and the state government is at its wits end.”[v]

The consequences include lesions on the hands and feet, intestinal problems, and cancer that can kill. In India, “the spread of arsenic contamination in groundwater seems to be assuming gargantuan proportions,” reported Current Science in 2005. “What is worse is that inhabitants of the affected areas are unaware and the local authorities totally oblivious to this grave problem. It was known that West Bengal (WB) and Bangladesh had high levels of arsenic in the groundwater, but slowly the problem is spreading to other states like Uttar Pradesh. This is confirmed by the reports of All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi that people living in the Ballia district of UP also have high levels of arsenic in their blood, hair, nails, etc.”[vi]

This convergence has totally escaped the polio fighters, just as the arsenic risk from deeper wells escaped the planners (ironically, those planners include the same World Health Organization now combating poliomyelitis there). “Most parts of India are polio free. Of the 35 states and Union Territories, 33 have stopped indigenous polio virus transmission. Only Uttar Pradesh (UP) and Bihar remain endemic for polio virus because of the uniquely challenging conditions like poor environmental sanitation, high population density, high birth rate which make them the most challenging places on earth to eradicate polio.”[vii]

But do those factors really make the two areas “unique” in all India? And why does the polio arc sweep across the same arsenic-poisoned swath of neighboring countries?

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At the proverbial 30,000-foot level – Himalayan height, as it happens -- the theory makes sense. But it also holds up on the ground. District by district, city by city, the dots connect.

-- In West Bengal, Howrah District was singled out for high arsenic contamination[viii] – and polio. A case of poliovirus reported there in April “has shocked the World Health Organization, UNICELF, Rotary International and the government itself.”[ix]

-- In Pakistan, “Another polio case in Muzaffargarh”[x] coincides with the fact that “arsenic was recently found in Pakistan, in and around Muzaffargarh on the south-western edge of the Punjab.”[xi]

-- In Afghanistan, half a million people are potentially at risk from arsenic poisoning, and the country is one of four where poliovirus remains endemic.

Why, given the arsenic disaster in Bangladesh, are there no recent polio cases there? It appears the virus has been wiped out. “Concerted efforts to eradicate polio in Bangladesh, resulted in the country being declared polio free in August 2000.”[xii]

Arsenic abatement also has been attacked most aggressively in Bangladesh, where the problem first surfaced. “In Bangladesh and West Bengal, at present less people are drinking arsenic contaminated water due to growing awareness and access to arsenic safe water. But no doubt the problem would not have attained such gravity, if it were not ignored for quite a long time. Unfortunately today similar mistakes are being repeated in Bihar, UP, Jharkhand, and Assam where still the villagers are drinking contaminated water. Non recognition of truth continues.”[xiii]

Indeed it does. Polio outbreaks, we believe, are persisting today for the same reason they arose. South Asia is simply a place where toxic interactions are triggering outbreaks that highlight the presence of the virus, like Luminol bringing out hidden blood splatters at a crime scene.

That would seem to spell trouble for programs guided by the belief that going after polio outbreaks will eradicate the virus – despite the vast resources currently being thrown at the effort.

On January 31, Bill Gates spoke at the Roosevelt House in Manhattan – “Bill Gates Channels Franklin Roosevelt,” as one news service put it -- where FDR recuperated after being stricken at Campobello. Gates said his foundation is making polio eradication its top priority because “it is the thing we can do to most improve the human condition.” He set a goal of 2013 but said, “Eradication is not guaranteed. It requires campaigns to give polio vaccine to all children under 5 in poor countries, at a cost of almost $1 billion per year.” [xiv]

Polio eradication itself is a controversial priority. Bill Gate’s own vanity – a heroic effort to make as big an impact on the technological destruction of disease as he did on the technology of computer software – has driven his poliovirus campaign, but many public health advocates grumble that it’s a low priority. Millions die every year from preventable diseases ranging from pneumonia to diarrhea.

“As Bill Gates presses forward in a costly mission to eliminate the disease, some eradication experts and bioethicists ask if it’s right to keep trying,” reported The New York Times in February 2011. “As new outbreaks create new setbacks each year, he has given ever more money, not only for research but for the grinding work on the ground.”

“We ought to admit that the best we can achieve is control,” argued Arthur L. Caplan, director of the University of Pennsylvania bioethics center, who had polio as a child. Gates calls his critics “cynics” who are “accepting 100,000 to 200,000 crippled or dead children a year” if polio resurges.

We believe a more cost-effective way to reduce and contain poliomyelitis outbreaks – as well as improve total health outcomes -- would be an all-out effort to reduce arsenic contamination and make sure people in South Asia have safe drinking water.

(Next: "Where was God?" -- Lessons learned and Lost)

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Dan Olmsted is Editor and Mark Blaxill is Editor-At-Large of Age of Autism. They are co-authors of The Age of Autism -- Mercury, Medicine and a Man-made Epidemic.

I have to echo the comments of the others, a fantastic series. One thing that I never quite understood was that polio epidemics were a recent phenomena. I just sort of assumed they have always been around; I had no idea “polio summer” was limited to the first half of the twentieth century. Your tie in with introduction of arsenic and lead is compelling; more information on the proposed biological mechanism would be helpful.

Since Wikipedia is quite a repository of allopathic conventional wisdom, I took a look at their explanation. It didn’t disappoint:

“Before the 20th century, polio infections were rarely seen in infants before six months of age, most cases occurring in children six months to four years of age. Poorer sanitation of the time resulted in a constant exposure to the virus, which enhanced a natural immunity within the population. In developed countries during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, improvements were made in community sanitation, including better sewage disposal and clean water supplies. These changes drastically increased the proportion of children and adults at risk of paralytic polio infection, by reducing childhood exposure and immunity to the disease.”

So, drinking and bathing in clean water instead of sewage-laden filth caused the polio epidemic. Sounds like a tough sell. I like your theory better.

I'm with Twyla - I have thoroughly enjoyed every paragraph in this fascinating series, as well as all the thought-provoking comments. Really makes me wish you guys would publish another book...you make one helluva great writing team!

You ask "Very interesting.
I wonder what's the status of DDT and other older pecticides in south-east Asia and west Africa."

DDT and other older and banned pesticides are freely available throughout India and other Asian countries. It's also been smuggled into Africa, who resented not being able to use it against Mosquitos. However, the fact is that AFP is quite common throughout agricultural areas of South America, where more "modern" sprays are used as well. The heavy duty sprays used in commercial banana plantations not only cause AFP which is often not reported, but various organisations have found that workers don't last there very long before they become seriously sick - if not dying.

Raymond Obomsawin did a major report on human ill-healths and deaths because of massive pesticide use in Thailand, that was worse than bad, and lost him his job.

The reason you don't get to hear about all this, is because those at the top have their tentacles down through all the industries involved in turning polio from an inconsequential commensal, to a paralytic causing disease.

And now that polio viruses are being pushed aside, other viruses are stepping in along with the other older ones like Cocksackie, echo, enteroviruses and continuing the process, but with the results logged under new diagnostic criteria to "hide" the issues.

It's all there in the medical literature. "They" just hope you don't look in it.

From the American Scientist article, “No one checked: Natural Arsenic in Wells

"Pinjira, age 25, mother of three, was told that her strange skin discoloration, raindrop-shaped dark spots on her skin, was widely shared by her neighbors. Her husband Masud was hard in judgment, saying, "She was pretty once, but now she is too thin and smells bad and is uglier by the day." He took a second legal wife, while Pinjira is bedridden and feverish."

Masud has enough energy and health to take another wife, so he does not drink the water too, or perhaps he is genetically superior to all of his neighbors and first wife?

Pinjira shares problems a lot of her neighbors share but apparently not 100 percent of her neighbors share. I wonder what percentage of the neighbors share her condition?

If it is just one percent of the population then what is the problem, keep drinking that clean water from those concrete sealed deep wells?

But wait perhaps it is larger than one percent, perhaps they also need to count the ones with lesions on thier hands and feet into that percentage (it is not the same symptoms, so I guess it would not count as part of the arsenic problem though).

Then the polio thing - there is no way they will count polio as part of the percentage of arsenic posioning too, because they lack the intelligence to connect dots.
But if they did - it would be a high percentage affected by deep well arsenic poisoning.

is it safe to assume too, that viruses and retroviruses in this population keep polio going too? Since HIV acts like XMRV, I wouldn't doubt this assumption. They keep on exploding harmless viruses into some man made caca that can't be rid. Somehow I think this was all done on purpose. Depopulation agendas are still in force. Bill Gates is the king of depopulation agenda..."if we get really good, we can vaccinate and control the population"...nice move Gates...are you the antichrist? As "smart" as he thinks he is...he is probably the dumbest nut on the planet. Or is he? Maybe that IS his agenda!

Arsenic can have opposing functions depending on the virus or form of arsenic but there are indications that it can enhance viral replication.
There is danger that if arsenic contaminations are not taken care of polio might be replaced with another virus and another disease.
Dan, Mark, thanks again for the great series!